HELIOSPHERE

Social media: the glue that binds us together, or the prime ingredient in a recipe for disaster?

As a society, we have become reliant upon social media, but if we don’t know where it is going next, how will we know where we are headed? Have our relationships changed beyond recognition in the world of social media, and do we take anything or anyone at face value anymore?

Instead of leaving these questions and decisions in the hands of the faceless corporations, researchers at Trinity College Dublin’s ADAPT centre are pioneering a new approach, placing you, the citizen and user, at the heart of the debate about our social media future. This event will empower attendees to voice their expectations, needs and concerns, and actively help to shape our social media future.

To reflect the public’s needs in shaping the social media landscape of the future, the Heliosphere was born. The event is a citizen’s think-in, in the format of a 360-degree live-streamed round table debate, which contains three spheres. In the central sphere, there is a round table seating four. Three domain experts and one member of the audience will debate thorny questions relating to social media in its current state, and imagine its future. The second layer is the audience seated around the inner circle. The third layer is formed by the global audience participating in the live-streamed 360-degree debate. The comments from both the local and online audiences are relayed to the main table via moderation, so the audience can become part of the conversation.

Around the table will be Coleman Noctor, a child and adolescent psychotherapist with St Patrick’s Mental Health Services; Gillian Roddie, TCD Tangent Learning & Innovation Programme Coordinator and a social media science communicator; Eoin O’Dell, TCD privacy law professor; and Kevin Koidl, TCD Research Fellow in Online Social Networks. Kevin will facilitate the debate, and for each topic, will invite a new audience member into the hot seat to join the conversation.

Join the conversation in person or online (https://www.heliosphere.social/), tell us what about our current social media is fundamentally broken, and share your vision of a more meaningful social media future.

OPENSHOP is Science Gallery Dublin’s Open Lab platform. It will host thinkshops, workshops and talkshops to explore the process of collaboration and creation, highlighting homegrown experimentation. It will showcase collaboration and experimentation from Trinity College Dublin’s research institutes showing lab spaces working in non-traditional ways, it will feature artist led collectives in Ireland working across disciplines and in a socially engaged way and it will facilitate workshops around provocative ideas with creative thinkers and disruptive entrepreneurs.

Please note – The debate will be live streamed and recorded. The recording will be published on the Heliosphere affiliated websites to help shape the wider debate of what kind of Social Media future we want. By registering for this event, you consent for your input to be recorded and shared in this way.